History from Six‐feet Below: Death Studies and the Field of Modern Middle East History

This article explores the intersections between scholarship of the nascent field of Death Studies and that of modern Middle East history. Death is both present and absent in the field of modern Middle East history. Death is present in that it is omnipresent; the discipline of history requires an inquiry into the worlds of those who have died, and Middle East scholars have long spoken of death and used the archives of death (e.g. probate courts or death certificates) in their research. However, death is absent in that it usually plays a supporting role and is rarely the primary lens of analysis in Middle East scholarship. This article discusses some of the existing literature, including that of cemeteries, burials and funerals, public health, crime, and legal reform. I argue that increased and conscientious engagement between the fields of Death Studies and modern Middle East history is both possible and productive. Placing death at the center of historical analysis asks questions of power and space, such as who controls the body, where a body might be buried, how a death should be processed, and what impact the dead might have on the various domains of the living. Moreover, it requires the scholar to grapple ideas that cannot be disentwined such as the tangible (e.g. body) and the intangible (e.g. spirituality), or public space and political belonging, in the process of illuminating how the dead continue to make social, spatial, and political claims on the living.